The Overlap Play: Turn Your Competitor’s Audience Into Your Pipeline

This play runs in two modes. Pick one before you start, don’t mix them. Method 1 — Direct Competitor Attack: target the audience of a head-to-head competitor. Best when your ICP already knows the category and you differentiate on a specific wedge (price, speed, onboarding, a single feature). Method 2 — Intent-Based Ecosystem Targeting: target followers of an adjacent or ecosystem tool your buyers use alongside your category—your CRM, your data warehouse, your design tool. Best when you sell something complementary and need volume more than precision. Pick one method per campaign. A direct attack and an ecosystem campaign need different copy, different sequencing, and different success metrics.

LinkedIn Sales Navigator is the single tool that makes this play repeatable. Build a lead search with these filters, in this order: 1. Geography + industry + company headcount — your ICP baseline 2. Current title (use title-level filters, not seniority) — the buyer persona 3. “Following your company” set to the competitor or ecosystem tool you picked in Step 1 4. “Posted on LinkedIn” in the last 30 days — optional, but it filters the pool down to people who are active right now Save the search. Sales Nav will keep it fresh. That’s your seed list.

The #1 mistake people make on this play: filtering too aggressively too early. You lose the signal you’re paying for. Pull your seed list broad. Load it into Google Sheets if the list is under 500, or Clay if it’s larger. Now apply your ICP filters inside the spreadsheet: • Drop anyone whose title doesn’t match (VP+ only, or ICs only, etc.) • Drop geographies outside your target • Drop company sizes outside your range • Enrich with email, LinkedIn URL, company domain, recent job changes You’ll typically keep 20–40% of the broad pool. That’s your working list.

Sounds obvious. Everyone forgets it. Before you export, add a filter: exclude anyone whose current company is the competitor you’re targeting. Pitching an Acme AE on why Acme is broken is a fast way to get blocked—and it makes your whole campaign look sloppy. If you’re running Method 2 (ecosystem targeting), this matters less—but still exclude the ecosystem tool’s employees from your list.

The entire edge of this play lives in the first two sentences of your outreach. Nail this template: 1) Specific reference — the exact thing that tipped you off (their comment, their review, the webinar they attended). This is your earned context. 2) Humble framing — “Not here to pitch you.” “Figuring out if this is even relevant.” Kills the AE radar. 3) Low-friction CTA — a 90-second Loom, a one-line reply, a resource. Never “15-minute meeting” in the first touch. Example (Method 1, Direct Competitor Attack): "Saw you commented on {{competitor}}’s launch post yesterday asking about {{specific thing}}. Not here to pitch—just noticed you’re evaluating this space. If the feature you were asking about is the reason you’re looking, we actually built it as our default. Want me to send a 90-sec Loom showing exactly that, no meeting?" Example (Method 2, Ecosystem Targeting): "Noticed you follow {{ecosystem tool}}—most of our customers run on it too. We’re the {{category}} that plugs into {{ecosystem tool}} in about 10 minutes. Not pitching, just asking: is {{category}} something your team actually owns, or does it sit somewhere else right now?"

Single-channel cold outreach is dead. The winning sequence for this play is three touches across three channels, all referencing the same earned context: Touch 1 — Email (Day 0): The done-your-homework opener. Short. No attachment. Touch 2 — LinkedIn InMail (Day 3): “Following up in case email isn’t your primary.” Reference the same context. Still no pitch. Touch 3 — Connection request (Day 7): No note, or a 100-character note that says “thought we should be connected given we’re both in the {{category}} space.” Let the prior two touches do the work. Do not pile on a 7-step email sequence. Three touches, three channels, done.

Baseline cold outreach reply rate: 2–5%. Competitor-audience outreach reply rate: 12–20%. If you’re not in that band by week 2, one of three things is wrong: • Your earned-context line is too generic (rewrite Step 5) • You’re using the competitor name as a brag instead of as context (rewrite Step 5) • Your list is filtered too early and you lost the signal (rewind to Step 3) The play either works in a week or your implementation is broken. Don’t wait a month to diagnose.